With Rogers on the Frontier: A Story of 1756

by J. Macdonald Oxley

"If we hadn't been such fools as to walk right into the trap they laid for us," he said to the man he had rescued as they marched together, "we'd not be running from them now, but they'd be running from us, and thinking only how far it was to Crown Point."

"You're just right," emphatically responded the other, whose name was John Wilcox. "There ought to have been scouts ahead of us to give us warning. I don't know what our colonel was thinking about when he let us go on like that, as if there were no French within twenty miles of us."

But of course it is always easy to be wise after the event, and now that the blunder had been committed, and had cost so dearly, it only remained to make the best of what was certainly a very serious situation.

Accordingly five hundred men were detailed to guard the flanks of the camp, while the remainder took up their position behind the wagons, or lay flat behind the logs and upturned bateaux, the Massachusetts men being on the right and the Connecticut men on the left. Not counting the Indians the actual fighting force numbered about seventeen hundred, the majority of them being rustics, who had never been under fire until that morning.

They were hardly settled at their posts when Seth's keen eyes caught the flash of bayonets through the boughs, and a minute later the white-coated regulars of France came into view, marching steadily down the road in serried array. At the same time a terrific burst of war-whoops rose on either side of them, and in the words of Pomeroy to his wife, "the Canadians and Indians helter-skelter, the woods full of them, came running with undaunted courage right clown the hill upon us, expecting to make us flee."

But in this they were greatly mistaken, for although some of the Colonials grew uneasy, their officers, sword in hand, threatened instant death to any who should attempt to leave their posts, and not one of them made a move.

Seth could not help admiring the steadiness shown by the regulars in their advance. Dieskau certainly had them well in hand, but the rest of his force, both red and white, scattered through the woods shouting, whooping, and firing from behind trees.

Well was it indeed for the English that their opponents as a whole did not display the same good discipline as the French, for had they done so the result would have been disastrous; but when only the regulars obeyed orders their attack lost much of its force and gave Captain Eyre, who commanded the artillery, a chance to open upon them with grape, which he did so effectually as to break up their orderly array and compel them to take to cover.

The firing on both sides now became general, and soon waxed so furious that to quote again Pomeroy's graphic words, "The hail stones from heaven were never much thicker than the bullets," yet, as he proudly added, "Blessed be God, that did not in the least daunt or disturb us."

Seth's position was on the right flank, and as Dieskau first directed his attack against the left and centre, he was for a time simply a spectator of the struggle.